Mohan Ramaswamy and Debbie Currie

The February 2013 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directive to researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research also served as an urgent call to action for academic libraries. In response, NCSU Libraries has been busily ramping up research data support services for our university’s researchers, but has not been able to gain a real foothold with our agriculture researchers because the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) currently does not require grant applicants to submit data management plans.

Enter stage right our proselytizing soil science professor, who had recently returned from workshop on critical data for agriculture and was eager to share what she had learned. She was appalled by how far behind agriculture is in the data management arena and is concerned that graduate students are not being adequately prepared to succeed in a world where data literacy will soon be a given. The participation of several academic librarians in the workshop led her to quickly recognize that “her librarians” could be important allies in bringing her agriculture colleagues up to speed so that they will not be caught flat-footed and forced to play catch up in the ultra-competitive federal funding process.

With all of this in mind, we are forging a partnership with this professor to try and get the proverbial horse to drink from the research data trough before the NIFA tsunami hits. This presentation will briefly discuss strategies being used to raise researcher awareness of the ways and means of successfully managing research data, followed by a more detailed analysis of steps taken to plan, develop, and implement a tailored educational program targeted to our agriculture researchers, with our proselytizing professor leading the way.